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Newsletter published by
Fine Vine Wines, LLC
"The Wine Maker's Toy Store™"
1300 N. Interstate 35-E, Suite 106
Carrollton, Texas 75006
February 2009
Volume 7, Issue 2
866-417-1114 (Long Distance)
972-323-7921 (Local)
972-323-7955 (Fax)
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I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Fine Vine Wines, LLC, "The Wine Maker's Toy Store". Whether you need home wine making products or just need information, we are here to serve you. I want to extend my thanks again for making The Wine Maker's Toy Store your home for your wine making needs. It continues to be my hope that every time you visit our web site or retail store, you will find something of value. |
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Cold Stabilization
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With the increased use of higher end wine kits like the Mosti Mondiale All Juice, RJ Spagnols En Primeur, fresh juice and fresh grapes, more customers are reporting seeing the formation of potassium acid tartrates. These are more commonly referred to as tartrate crystals or just tartrates. They are also called "Wine Diamonds". These occur naturally in wines that are high in tartaric acid when the wines are stored for an extended time in a wine cooler or refrigerator. As such, they appear more in white wines than in reds as most people do not chill their red wines for an extended period.
These tartrates are completely harmless and will not affect the taste or the flavor of the wine and can easily be removed by decanting or poorly slowly. However, they can be considered a flaw in your wine and since most commercial wines are cold stabilized, the majority of wine drinkers has never seen them and may think there is something wrong with their wine. If you give away your wine or enter it into competition, you may want to make sure your wine does not throw these tartrates.
To eliminate the formation of tartrates in the wine bottle, you will need to either cold stabilize your wine or add metatartaric acid. Wineries are prohibited from adding metatartaric acid, so there only answer is cold stabilization. Some of the RJ Spagnols wine kits, especially the En Primeur line includes this acid to add prior to bottling. Since metatartaric acid is not readily available and is only recommended for early drinking wines, this article will focus on cold stabilization.
The difficulty associated with cold stabilization is finding someplace cold enough to cause the formation of the tartrates. If you live in a location that has long cold winters, you can just put your wine outside for several days when it gets below zero. For the rest of us or those wanting to stabilize in warmer months, you must find a place where you can keep the wine chilled for an extended period of time. The best temperatures are 14 -25° for up to 2 weeks. If you can't get your wine that cold, you can go as high as 39°, but you will need to plan on 3 weeks for the tartrates to form. The lower temperature is always more effective and faster.
If you have the space and extra money, the best option for home wine makers is to use a refrigerator with the setting turned as low as it will go or a freezer turned up to 14-25°. This takes up space and will increase your utility bill.
As previously mentioned, this is not something that must be done and can be avoided by NOT storing your wine in the refrigerator for extended time. If you do have tartrates, decant the wine or poor slowly. Tartrates will not affect the taste or the aroma of your wine.
For more information on this subject, read Dan Pambianchi' book "Techniques in Home Wine Making."
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WINESTOCK 2009 - April 10-12, 2009
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Due to poor planning on my part (Easter Weekend) and the economy, registrations for this years Winestock have been extremely light; therefore, I am in the process of revamping this event. We will still have it and we will still have Nino Piazza and Matteo Meglioli, but the format, location and price will change.
For those of you that have already registered, we have not processed your credit cards. Once the new format is set, we will contact you to see if you are still interested in attending before we process your registration.
Please note that we will NOT have the People's Choice Awards this year. If you have been saving your wine for this event, why not enter it in the WineMaker Magazine competion.
We will have the new format set this week and will be sending an email with the details as soon as we can. | |
WineMaker Magazine Conference
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The 2nd Annual WineMaker Magazine Conference will be held in Napa Valley, California on May 15-16, 2009. This will give you the opportunity to join fellow winemakers from across North America in the heart of Northern California's wine country for two full days packed with seminars and special events to help you make your own great wine.
- 26 big seminars
- Classes on winemaking techniques, grape growing & more!
- Special social events to trade ideas with fellow winemakers
As with last year, The Wine Maker's Toy Store will be one of the sponsors of this oustanding event. In addition, we will be providing free shirts to all of customers that are attending. If you would like a free shirt to wear at this event, please send me an email with your size. We will bring the shirts with us and hand out them out at the show. In addition, we will have a table set up and if you would like to help at the table, please let me know.
To learn more click on the following link:
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| WineMaker Magazine Awards
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Each month, we will remind you about these awards because we want to be the "Retailer of the Year". This is based on the total scores of the wines entered for each retailer. Last year, we finished 6th in the U.S. and 13th overall and I would like to be #1.
The due date of next year's competition is March 17, 2009, so start thinking about which wines you want to enter. |
WINES OF THE MONTH
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A lot of you received your first wine kit for Christmas. As such, you may be ready to start your next kit. You are probably not ready to make the jump to the larger kits quite yet, so to help you save a little money with your next kit, we are putting all of our 10 liter kits on sale this month for 6% off. The individual brands included are:
- Mosti Mondiale Vinifera Noble
- Cellar Craft 12 Liter, and
- Winexpert Vintener's Reserve
- Winexpert World Vineyard
All of these wine kits are ready to bottle in 4-5 weeks and are ready to drink in another 2-4 months. These wine kits will also improve with 6-12 months aging. Remember with all of our "Wines of the Month", we try to anticipate demand, but may not be 100% successful. If we run out of a special, we will advise you of such and an expected ship date. We appreciate your understanding.
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| DFW AREA HOME WINE MAKING CLUB
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The next Cork's Crew, the Home Winemaker's Club meeting will be on Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. at the Wine Maker's Toy Store. We will have a one-flight tasting of Zinfandel (Red, not the blush white Zinfandel) and Petite Sirah. Please bring six wine glasses for the tasting and an appetizer. We will also have a brief discussion of upcoming events for the year. Please be sure to attend this important meeting. The website can be found at http://www.homewinemakersclub.com or http://www.homewinemakersclub.org.
If you would like to be added to the club mailings, please give me a call.
Hope to see you there. |
| Toys of the Month
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For those of you that want to spruce up your bottles, we have all of our PVC shrink wraps on sale. Whether you want a bag of 30 for $2.49 or a bag of 500 for $29.99, they are all on sale. In addition, we have put the Fast Seal Tool on sale for $3.99 (regulary $4.99). This is a great tool for holding the capsule on the bottle while you dip it in boiling water to shrink the cap.
To see the pricing on these items, click here. |
| NEW PRODUCTS
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To see all of the products added during the last 60 days, visit our New Products Page whenever you visit the web site.
If you are looking for a product that I do not carry, my distributors are LD Carlson and Crosby & Baker, Ltd. You can see their complete product list at their public catalogs. If you find anything you would like me to add, please let me know. |
ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Over the next several months, I will be re-designing the online ordering system to make it more user friendly and provide more information. I have looked at several "canned" shopping carts, but none of them provide me with the flexibility for offering my special discounts. As such, I will be making the changes myself.
Some of the planned changes are:
- Ability to fill your shopping cart anonymously,
- Ability to move items from your cart to your wish list,
- More information about the wine kits, including links to our online database of the wines we have made.
- Ability to track your order through our online system.
If you have any suggestions, please email them to me. If possible, I will incorporate all suggestions. |
| LAST MONTH'S BOTTLING PARTY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I would like to thank all 50 of you that attended our last bottling party. That's right, we had 50 wine makers helping us to bottle 25 carboys of wine. I hope you all had fun and I have Joseph busy on wine for the next party in June.
Thanks again for your help and we will make more room for the next party. | |
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When you have a question or just want to learn more about wine making, don't forget our forum! We have over 1,300 registered members with over 96,000 posts! We have some extremely knowledgeable wine makers with loads of valuable information willing to assist you in your wine making needs. Responses to most posts are made within minutes. We are also known to have an occasional contest available to forum member only with valuable gifts, savings and coupons!
Whether you are an expert or a novice, it is an excellent place to ask questions, exchange ideas and meet other home wine makers. If you haven't logged into the forum, try it sometime. I think you will find it most informative and enjoyable, as well as, a great place to meet fellow wine makers.
DISCOUNTS
The most common discounts are listed below:
CUSTOMER REFERRAL PROGRAM
We have a customer referral program that provides additional discounts to registered users. We will give you a coupon worth 10% of the first order placed by any person that you refer to our web site. The stipulations are as follows:
- You must be a registered user of finevinewines.com,
- The person placing the order must register and provide your full name in the appropriate field on the registration screen, and
- The discount is only good for future orders with finevinewines.com and is not redeemable for cash.
CUSTOMER APPRECIATION PROGRAM - FVW GROWERS CLUB
Please check out our FVW Growers Club. You can get all of the details on our web site, but the bottom line is we want to buy your loyalty! Once you spend $500 with us, you get at least 5% discount on everything you buy from us (10% on orders over $100.00). Find out more on the web site.
REGISTRATION DISCOUNT (FIRST TIME ORDERS)
To receive this 5% off, all you have to do is register with us and place an order for $50.00, or more (excluding shipping and taxes). If your first order is for more than $140.00, we will give you 10% off. When you register, you will also be given the opportunity to sign up for our monthly newsletter, which is the only recurring email we send. We will not blast you with email after email touting our current specials. We encourage you to register to make the ordering process easier on you.
BIRTHDAY CLUB
If you are a registered user and have provided your birth day and month, every year you will receive a coupon good for $5.00 off any order over $25.00. This coupon is in addition to any other discounts in which you may be entitled. These coupons are emailed on the first of the month and are good for your birth month only. To join up, register, go to the My Account section and provide your birth day and month.
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
We appreciate all of your comments, whether good or bad. To demonstrate our commitment to outstanding customer service, I have created a web page with your feedback. As we receive emails that comment about our service, I will post them on this page:
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As a reminder, we continue to add products and content to the web site, therefore, if you have any special requests, please let us know. We like to hear what you have to say about our site, our products and/or our customer service, good or bad. Please send your comments and/or suggestions to winemaster@finevinewines.com.
Don't forget we like you to CALL!
If you have any questions about our products, our service and/or wine making, please call us. We are here to serve you and enjoying assisting you in any way we can. We have an international toll-free line so you WILL call us. Someone is usually at the store between 9 am and 7 pm, Monday through Saturday. We always try to answer the phone when you call; however, sometimes, we are unable to answer the phone as we are on the other lines or we have customers in the store. If you get the voice mail, please leave your name, number, brief message and a best time to call. We will return your call just as soon as we can. If you don't want to call, just send us an email. We usually answer our emails daily. Please remember, we are a resource and we are here to serve you.
We don't want to be the biggest store, just the BEST!
Cheers!
George Cornelius, President
Fine Vine Wines, LLC, The Wine Maker's Toy Store
Contact Information
George Cornelius - President
Mark Cornelius - Shipping Manager
Joseph Schuitema - Resident Wine Maker and Technical Creator
phone: 1-866-417-1114 |
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